Premoney 66: Twig & Homiah

AI for technical CX & a Southeast Asian sauce

August 04, 2023

Welcome back! We made a record 15 introductions last week, and were able to slip a few investors into a close round with Aethero Space. If you’re feeling fomo, note they’ll be back raising a larger round in a few months.

To all of the new readers of Premoney:

  1. Welcome! If you haven’t already, please reply to this email introducing yourself, why you signed up, and what type of investing & scouting you’re interested in. Excited to meet you!

  2. What to expect: In each Premoney newsletter you’ll learn about two companies that are currently raising.

  3. Meet the founders: If you’re intrigued by the companies featured, hit the “Connect with…” button and we’ll introduce you directly to the founders.

If you’re a founder, currently raising, and want to apply to be on Premoney, submit an application here: www.premoney.xyz 

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This weeks companies:

Company: Homiah

Founder: Michelle Tew

Raise Details: Raising $500k, $300K+ committed. Strategic investors include:

Vertical: Consumer, Food

Business Model: DTC + Retail

1-Liner: Homiah is America's first Southeast Asian Nonya pantry (Malaysian/ Indonesian/ Singaporean cuisine).

Description: Founder Michelle makes authentic, ready-to-eat sauces and condiments based on her Malaysian grandmother's recipes.

Traction Indicators: Only 1 year after launch:

  • 100 retail positions

  • >$300K in revenue,

  • Cash flow positive

  • 70% Gross Margins

  • ~50% email open rate and 10x higher social engagement than our peers.



  • Our monthly run rate has 5X-ed over the last year

Why we like Homiah

Traction in a short period of time is impressive, Homiah has made its way onto shelves across the country and has a very strong DTC presence.

Lean operations & good cash flow, represented by the first year of operations - leading to $300k+ in sales done with a single full time employee. Indicates a great foundation to build a scalable operation given an industry with difficult margins.

Tailwinds are strong, as other brands like Omsom, Fly By Jing & Zing have opened a massive market for more authentic flavors.

Company: Twig.so

Founder: Chandan Maruti

Raise Details: Raising $500K pre-seed

  • 50% committed.

  • Investors include tier 1 VC Scout Fund, VP of CX at Cisco, VPs at Zuora, Deep Sentinal, Diffbot, Zyme, EventBrite, Life 360

Vertical: Dev tools, Artificial Intelligence

Business Model: B2B

1-Liner: Vertical AI Platform for Technical CX Teams.

Description: Twig empowers developer-focused companies to deliver world-class customer support, with four times less staff using AI agents and domain data. The founders are experienced AI and CX professionals from H2O.ai, LambdaSchool, Workday, and Intel. Our Vertical AI comes from a deep understanding of the domain and is highly differentiated.

Traction Indicators:

  • $50K ARR

  • 30% MoM growth

  • 5 Paying Enterprise Customers with annual contracts

  • #1 Hacker News

Why we like Twig

Massive, niche TAM: There’s dozens of AI for CX companies popping up as GPT wrappers fighting for the same, typically B2C businesses. Where Twig differentiates is that it focuses on highly technical industries who’s CX experiences are notoriously difficult to manage, as the questions are deeply technical, which opens them up to being able to service the B2B market.

Strong growth & high switching costs: Very early product with 5 large enterprises already using the product in a sticky fashion (usage growing 30% MoM). Twig also has large & growing switching costs. As users utilize its CX experience, accuracy increases which increases stickiness.

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That’s all for this week! Thank you everyone, and please share, send feedback and introductions, or reach out to collaborate.

Jake